News and Opinion

I don’t like titles with my own name in them, but this is both accurate and more conducive to web searches.

For a while I’ve been wondering about what to do with my old papers and articles. Having published for over 25 years, I have a large number of them, some of which are in now out-of-print books, obscure journals, or film festival catalogs that were never intended for wide distribution. I was not always particular about where I published—for instance only thinking about “tenure-able” venues—and always believed that academics should be instructive where they can in multiple platforms. But in trying to reach out to many audiences, some of my writing has been caught in the ephemerality of much publishing. While I don’t intend to assert my scholarship deserves world-wide attention, I still hope some of it can be of help to both film fans and scholars, which it can’t if it is unavailable or not readily available.

That’s why I’ve decided to start making available some of my old papers and articles on a couple of internet platforms. The first is the Yale section of Bepress, an open access platform. The second is Academia.edu. I am more comfortable with the former, since Academia.edu, despite its educational name, is a for-profit company, but I thought using multiple platforms means more availability.